Cuba embargo isn't working but isn't going away

America’s embargo on Cuba began its 53rd year this fall, and it’s hard to find anyone who thinks it’s working. Even Cuban-Americans who hate the Castro brothers and fervently insist that the embargo remain in place generally agree that it has accomplished little, if anything.

Still, said Jaime Suchlicki, a Cuban émigré who is the director of the Cuba Transition Project at the University of Miami, “do you give away a policy that has been in place for 50 years, whether you think it’s right or wrong, good or bad, effective or not — for nothing? Without a quid pro quo from Cuba?”

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Suchlicki came to the United States in the first wave of Cuban refugees in 1960 after the communist revolution. His hardline views mirror those of many in his generation. And for decades, it dominated the Cuba discussion in Florida, a state presidential candidates have long believed they need to win to be elected.

But today the Cuban-American population is more diverse, as the U.S. presidential election last month showed. Previously, Cuban-Americans regularly voted in favor of Republicans, who are generally staunch embargo supporters, by 4 to 1. This time, President Barack Obama won half their vote.

Now an argument can be made that if the half-century of political paralysis on this issue can be overcome, both Cuba and the United States would benefit. American tourists would most likely pour into Cuba, buying cigars, staying in beachfront hotels — spending money in the Cuban economy. And American businesses would find an eager new market for a range of products beyond the food and medicine they are already authorized to sell.

“We cannot afford an obsolete ideological war against Cuba,” Richard Slatta, a history professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in Latin America, wrote in an op-ed last month. “The embargo against Cuba denies North Carolina businesses and farmers access to a major, proximate market.”

Cuba experts say many business leaders, particularly, are making the same case, especially now that the American economy has remained in the doldrums for so long. They add that it’s an obvious second-term issue; Obama doesn’t have to worry about winning Florida again.

But for so many people in Washington, “Cuba doesn’t matter any more now,” said Ted Piccone, deputy director for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution and a former National Security Council official. “There’s no political incentive” to change the policy — even though the arguments for changing it are rife. Despite ample provocation, the U.S. doesn’t impose similar embargoes on other authoritarian states.

Late last month, for example, Kazakhstan said it planned to shut down the last of its independent and opposition media, meaning “pluralism would quite simply cease to exist in this country,” Reporters Without Borders said in a news release. But has anyone talked about imposing an embargo there?

In September, Cambodia, one of the world’s most repressive nations, sentenced Mam Sonando, a 71-year-old radio station owner, to 20 years in jail for criticizing the government on air. He’d been broadcasting for decades. At about the same time, newspaper journalist Hang Serei Odom was found dead in the trunk of his car, hacked to death with an ax. He had been writing about illegal logging, a long-standing problem in Cambodia.

Despite that and much more, Obama visited Phnom Penh last month, attending an Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference. Has anyone in Washington advocated imposing an embargo there? Suchlicki said, “Maybe we should.”

“Despite political tensions” with Venezuela, another authoritarian state in Latin America, the State Department says: “The United States remains Venezuela’s most important trading partner. In 2011, bilateral trade topped $55.6 billion.”

The State Department endlessly debates this question about foreign aid that applies to Cuba: Cutting off aid to a nation removes any ability to influence it, one side of the debate goes. But the counterargument is: Does that mean the U.S. should continue giving aid to a brutal, repressive government? It’s a quandary with no clear solution.